There was a dull ache in his side where a foot had caught him and a bad graze on his right cheek. He pulled off his shirt and splashed lukewarm water over his face. As he started to dry himself, there was a knock at the door and Katina entered.
She was wearing the same silk headscarf and cream linen dress and she closed the door and smiled. “How do you feel?”
He grinned. “Too old for street brawls with men hah; my age.”
She opened his suitcase, took out a clean shirt and unbuttoned it for him. “What have you been doing?”
“Going back into the past,” he said. “Trying to make some sense out of things.”
“A dangerous game. They say one should never return to anything.”
“I’m beginning to think they’re right. I’m not even sure who I am anymore.”
“You are Hugh Lomax,” she said, and with uncanny perception added, “The Nightcomer died a long time ago.”
“I’m not so sure,” he said. “He almost killed a man this afternoon.”
To that she had no answer and he went on, “There’s no logic to it, Katina. No answer. I’ve only one thing to hang on to in a world gone mad. The fact that I know that I didn’t betray those who helped me.”
“I know, Hugh,” she said. “I believe you and so does Oliver. He wants to see you. He thinks he might be able to help. Will you come out to the villa with me?”
“What have I got to lose?” he said. “I’d like to meet him again in any case.”
She crossed to the door and opened it. “I’ll see you downstairs. I want a word with Anna before we leave.”
He decided against a shave and finished dressing quickly. When he walked out into the hot sunlight of the square five minutes later, she.was sitting behind the wheel of the jeep talking to Kytros.
As Lomax approached, the police sergeant turned and examined him critically. “You look in considerably better shape than Dimitri.”
“How is he?” Lomax asked.
“When I last saw him he was having several stitches inserted into his face,” Kytros said. “But don’t underestimate him. It will take more than one beating to put him on his back. He’s made of iron and his capacity for hate is frightening.”
“Am I to take that as a warning?”
Kytros nodded gravely. “Keep off the streets at night, Mr. Lomax. There are those here who would kill you. I’d rather you didn’t make it easy for them.”
“My pleasure.” Lomax climbed into the jeep beside Katina. “Was there anything else?”
“Perhaps the only worthwhile legacy of the German occupation is our telephone system,” Kytros told him. “If you could keep me informed of your movements it would help. If I’m not at my office, the operator should 4e able to contact me for you.”
He stepped back and Katina drove away across the square. As they turned into a side street she said, “Will you do as he asks?”
Lomax nodded. “Why not, if it keeps him happy?”
She concentrated on her driving, taking the jeep expertly through the twisting, narrow streets. There was a new bridge over the ravine outside town, its web of steel replacing the stonework of the old, but otherwise nothing seemed to have changed.
He lit a cigarette, his hands cupped against the breeze, and turned sideways so that he could look at her.
“Where’s Yanni?” he said.
She smiled. “I left him hi the kitchen eating his head off.”
“Who with-old Maria?”
Her smile faded. “Maria died a long time ago at Fonchi. They took her when they arrested Oliver.”
He groaned, remembering the old woman and her kind-‘ ness, and then another thought came to him and he said slowly, “What happened to your aunt?”
“She tried to warn my uncle when they came for him. They shot her down on the stairs.”
“Something else he blames me for?” Lomax asked bitterly, but she made no reply and they continued the journey in silence.
When she stopped the engine in the yard outside the stables at the rear of the villa, it was still and hot and very quiet and nothing had changed. Time stood still, the past and the present merging to touch everything with a slight edge of unreality.